Samuel Rambo

Samuel Rambo was a native of Elkton, Maryland and served an apprenticeship with a carpenter in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1884, at the age of twenty-one, he moved to Philadelphia and began employment as a trained carpenter with George F. Payne and Company.

During the summer of 1903, Payne named Rambo to be superintendent of construction for the Pennsylvania Capitol, replacing Owen Roberts who had been killed in an accident on the job.

Samuel Rambo served as superintendent of Capitol construction from 1903 until the completion of the Capitol in 1906. Afterwards, he made a career for himself as a respected member of the Commonwealth government.

In February 1907 Governor Edwin S. Stuart appointed him to succeed James M. Shumaker as Superintendent of Public Grounds and Buildings, a position he would hold for a decade. Later that year, Rambo served as a key witness during the hearings of the Capitol Investigation Commission.

As superintendent, he successfully oversaw the first Capitol Park extension from 1911 to 1916. In 1915 Rambo, together with Harrisburg architect Charles A. Keyworth, proposed the enlargement of the Capitol in an extension eastward which would have doubled its size, but his plan was rejected.

Rambo was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Department of Property and Supplies in 1923 and served in that capacity until his resignation in 1929. During the course of his final governmental tenure, he collected extensive files documenting both the Capitol's construction and its artwork.